Newark's continuing dilemma

The plight of Karl and Nicole Randolph is the latest installment in Newark's dilemma, a capsule of the city's problems as it attempts to recreate itself.

Last year the Randolphs, including their four children, left Utica, N.Y., to start a better life in Newark. They settled in Georgia King Village, a private housing complex for low-income families. He found work as a cable television technician and she decided to get a nursing degree at Essex County College.

But then ominous events began to occur: a teen with a gun shot into a courtyard, wounding five; someone pushed the Randolphs' window open to steal two juice containers on the same day an iPod and $25 was stolen from their car.

Last week, Karl Randolph found two burglars on the first floor of the apartment, instructed his wife to call 911 and gave chase. He was shot, apparently by one of the fleeing burglars. As he recovers at University Hospital, Nicole Randolph calls moving here "the worst mistake I ever made."

No matter how safe Newark might be for visitors to NJPAC or the Rock, if the streets are not safe for the people who live here, all the marketing in the world will not dispel the aura of danger that clings to its streets like a bad fog.